Why did Rockefeller not come to Attica?

Robert Douglass: Then there was a group of people that came in and volunteered to kind of broker peace in the situation. It included Herman Bedio, Bill Kuntsler, Eldridge Cleaver. And it was quite a collection of people.

And they invited me in, and demanded to see the Governor, and I said, "Look, the Governor has made it very clear that he's not going to come into a riot situation because-- You can talk to the Governor, you're free to call him and you can discuss anything you want, but he strongly feels that he should not come into a prison situation where you're holding hostages under threat of death and negotiate, because it's not a negotiation."

"Well, he's got to come up here. Somehow something would happen if he comes here."

"Yes, I'll tell you what'll happen. He'll be invited to go out in the yard and talk to the prisoners, and if every time there's a prison uprising and they take a hostage and threaten to kill him, unless the Governor comes, the Governor's going to spend most of his time going to prison riots."

And they agreed with that, but perhaps something would happen if he'd come. I said, "Well, why don't you call him?" And they made their plea that he, he come up and he said, "Look, I feel very strongly that I've got good people, I believe in the State Police, and, and they're professionally trained, my corrections commissioner's considered the best in the country. I've got my counsel up there," and he said, "I'm following the situation but it doesn't make any sense."

And he, and then this group of negotiators, actually went into the yard and tried to, to find some peaceful way of resolving it, and they were threatened. And so they left -- this was on a Sunday -- feeling totally dispirited that this thing had gone downhill to the point where they didn't know what, if anything, could pull it out.

And we spent the rest of Sunday sending messages in, saying, "Look, if you'll release the hostages everybody will be treated decently and restore order and there'll be no recriminations."

And we got back no response, and the only response we saw was a building up of the defenses so that any of the entry points into the prison yard were starting to become barricaded with mattresses. They were fashioning weapons, they soaked mattresses in gasoline, and it looked like they were getting ready for some kind of a battle.